With the advances in digital technology, sizes of the digital devices decrease while their processing power increases. As a consequence, the newer digital devices are more powerful and even smaller compared to the older ones. By taking advantage of this shrinkage in size and exploiting the increase in processing power, communications companies are able to design a single mobile device which has several add-on functions for different purposes. For instance, currently, it is very easy to find a personal digital assistant (PDA) that has wireless communication capability in addition to its main purpose, which is computation. In parallel, almost all contemporary mobile phones have non-wireless applications (such as a digital camera). Currently, there are mobile devices in which Infra-red Data association
(IrDA), Bluetooth, local area network (LAN) wireless connectivity options, digital camera, and Global Positioning System (GPS) are embedded together.
In spite of this vast variety of wireless and other applications embedded in a single device, it is striking that the functions, which have the ability to provide extremely important information to each other, operate independently. This lack of cooperation stems from the fact that there is no unit which can control, coordinate, and interpret the data obtained from different functions. However, with the emergence of cognitive radio (CR), this lack of cooperation can be removed.
As an emerging technology, CR receives significant attention from both academia and industry. Nevertheless, there is no formal definition of CR on which everybody agrees. However, distinct features of CR, which are sensing, being aware of, learning, and adapting to its surrounding environment, allow us to describe it coarsely. Built on software-defined radio (SDR), CR is able to employ these features in its adaptation cycle with the aid of several sensors (e.g. GPS, light, and temperature sensors) and tools used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications (e.g. neural networks, hidden Markov models (HMMs), genetic algorithms. Naturally, the adaptation cycle requires a complete control and coordination of these features.
Rapid advances in digital technology allow people to have a single wireless device that has multiple functions such as communication, computing and entertainment. Currently, the functions operate independently of each other, since there is not unit which controls and coordinates the add-on hardware.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a system and method that takes advantage of each wireless device to improve communication in a cognitive radio wireless communication system.